Comparison between n-butanol and ethanol combustion kinetic models through one-dimensional premixed flame simulations

RODOLFO CAVALIERE DA ROCHA; DARIO ALVISO; NASSER DARABIHA; ROGERIO GONCALVES DOS SANTOS

Rio de Janeiro

Congreso; 23rd ABCM International Congress of Mechanical Engineering - COBEM2015; 2015

ABCM

The alcohol n-Butanol is an organic substance being proposed as an alternative fuel for internal combustion engines. Improvements in its production as a bio-fuel, through fermentation processes, and its combustion characteristics, close to those of gasoline and diesel, grow attention to its viability as a renewable and economically interesting substitute to petrol-based fuels. However, few is known about its combustion characteristics, thus motivating research in that area.Ethanol is a bio-fuel widely used in commercial engines, specially in Brazil and the United States, and is a proposed blending agent for n-butanol. The present study compares chemical kinetic models for n-butanol, ethanol and their mixtures through numerical simulation in order to generate information for a future experiment, to be developed in a counter-flow laminar burner. In this equipment a mixture of fuel and air is injected through an axi-symmetric convergent burner against either the same mixture or a methane/air mixture. Hot gases are located between two flame fronts parallel to the stagnation plane. The flame front structure depends on the equivalence ratio and the strain rate. Strain rate can be changed by varying the injection velocities. In the present study,1-D formulation is employed to describe the premixedflame configuration. After that, further analysis in 1-D counter-flow configuration shall be done. The system is modeled by considering detailed chemical kinetics and multi-component transport properties.